Board game design: modelling your customers & understanding your audience.

what class of tabletop gamer are you druid fighter rogue or bard what would you rather play right now wingspan or snake oil pandemic or evidel santorini or zombie dice chemet or calico we could conceive of a classification for board game players a questionnaire a matrix it's been done for video game players many times but rarely for tabletop gamers in my previous video i discussed the use of hooks in board game design mechanical thematic physical or contextual features which pique interest and draw players in but a hook for one player is potentially a turn off for another if you're going to devise a hook for your game you really need to identify who you're trying to appeal to who is your potential audience and what are they looking for i'm adam porter i'm a game designer from wales with a particular interest in board games as products i like to use a design thinking approach which requires inventors to empathize with their end user from an early stage in the process if we're going to create something of value we need to put ourselves in our customers shoes think about what they want and what they need there have been many attempts over many decades to classify personality types most have no scientific validity and have been soundly debunked the disk system is one such classification which claims that some people are more interested in issues and tasks while others are more interested in relationships some people are extroverted and some are reserved and this creates four distinct categories of personality i'm going to take the liberty of adapting this model for tabletop gamers fully aware of the hubris of taking an unscientific model and hastily butchering it with no research and only the briefest of contemplation nonetheless i push on because i do think there's still some utility here this is not a scientific journal it's a youtube video and the following is a broad hypothesis based on years of observation and little more in my videos over the years i've often categorized and curated board game mechanisms and genres and i've found that doing so frequently uncovers new design ideas and opportunities for exploration couldn't hurt to do the same with gamers right so let's see what ideas it throws up my adapted model retains the horizontal axis from introversion to extroversion but the vertical axis has changed i'm proposing that some players are interested in analysis while others are more interested in thrills and this creates four new classes which i'm rather cheekily calling druids fighters rogues and bards and yes i know that those names don't fit particularly well but i haven't got that much to choose from the druids are introverted analysts they favor low interaction games with low levels of chance and lots of opportunity for calculation organization and resource management druids may be competitive but mostly with themselves striving to build on previous achievements and strategies an example game which a druid enjoys is agricola a low interaction high complexity strategy game fighters are extroverted analysts they favor a high degree of interaction but they still seek out strategic play and intellectually challenging gameplay fighters want games which can be won based on skill rather than luck but they're accepting of the chaotic nature of interactive play attacking your opponent while defending your own resources is fun for fighters an example game enjoyed by a fighter would be root an area control game with asymmetric player powers and conflict rogues are extroverted thrill seekers they prioritize interaction and the experience of the game over developing strategies rogues are very forgiving of luck based play and take that mechanisms they prefer to think on the fly and adapt to the cards they have in hand the most important thing for a rogue is that everyone is laughing and ideally that they're at the center of the experience and getting noticed an example game enjoyed by a rogue would be munchkin a humorous luck based card game where players persistently attack their opponents to advance their own position abard is an introverted thrill seeker they're all about the experience but they would rather go it alone solo games and cooperative games appeal to bards so long as they tell a strong story bards are forgiving of luck in their games they'd prefer to face off against a random card draw than a human opponent an example game enjoyed by a bard is pandemic a cooperative puzzle where players work together to defeat a randomly generated spreading global virus i don't have a clever questionnaire devise to determine what class of gamer you are but i'm really interested to hear your gut feeling are you a druid or a fighter a rogue or a bard or perhaps you're a mixture of multiple classes it would be fascinating to see what sort of gamers are watching my channel please let me know in the comments there's no right way to play games there's no one genre or style of player which is more valid than another and frankly a matrix is not a prison cell just because you're a rogue doesn't mean you couldn't enjoy a game of chess or splendor or puerto rico from time to time the classification is broad and imprecise each of us develops gaming values at a young age based on our experiences and interactions with friends and family if you have warm memories of a loving family gathered around this light strategy game you might be on the path to becoming a lifelong druid if your introduction to games came at an older age a group of alcohol-fueled adolescents get fouring their way through an irreverent party game well you might be on the path to becoming a rogue or perhaps you only ever played with competitive cheaty siblings and frequently lost well you might be wary about getting involved in board games at all these core gaming values are likely to stay with us but layered on top of our core values we also have more fluid tastes gaming preferences which fluctuate depending on our mood our energy our personal circumstances and trends in the industry our values and tastes create our core gaming persona or player class but i know that my own persona changes depending on the people around me i understand my friends preferences and if they're having fun chances are i'm having fun too in short our gaming persona is further moderated by our circumstances and the people that we play with but the purpose of this exercise is not about pigeon holing or navel gazing it's about creating avatars if you're going to devise a hook for your game you really need to identify who you're trying to appeal to so let's see if we can identify some applications for a classification system like this which class of gamer would enjoy your game wingspan is an accessible engine building game about bird watching with low interaction beautiful imagery and a good amount of chance wingspan is likely to appeal to bards but perhaps the more druidy end of that category if you struggle to identify which class your game might appeal to perhaps it has features of three or four different classes but you might then struggle to find your audience luck based play could be jarring in an otherwise very cerebral lengthy strategy game likewise slow solitary calculations have no place in a party game it's better to identify a smaller audience remember each of these classes actually contains a pretty sizable number of individuals the goal should be to excel in your particular niche rather than trying to please everyone and then failing to please anyone what sort of hook do the different classes respond to analytical gamers so that's druids and fighters respond to mechanical hooks the difficulty is that they also tend towards more complex gameplay where that mechanical hook could be quite hard to describe in a pithy phrase so often the hook in these games ends up being contextual druids and fighters might follow specific designers for example uber rosenberg stephenfeld vitalisada eric lang and pick up the latest game from that designer based on reputation alone bards and rogues are more likely to respond to thematic hooks story is important rogues are sociable they want a wild invigorating time so they might enjoy a more experiential slant a theme or setting which makes them feel naughty or mischievous rogues welcome chaos and big moments so a physical hook or perhaps a dexterity element might be attractive to some gamers in this class of course this all carries through to the presentation of the product a great box cover tells you what you're going to be doing in the game but more importantly how you're going to feel a druid prides themselves on serious methodical reasoning testing their intellect by taking on a complex game system they don't want to feel childish or frivolous on box cover alone they're more likely to gravitate towards the sleek serious box art for kandan than the cartoony comic book imagery of automania fighters look for confrontation conflict and negotiation the box cover and title of blood rage is more attractive to them than the peaceful serene image on the cover of evolution bards want immersive stories flashpoint fire rescue and pandemic both do a good job with their movie poster box art rogues want to feel naughty cash and guns epic spell wars of the battle wizards and exploding kittens press the right buttons for these players with their anarchic irreverent styling identifying avatars can also be useful to develop a brand as a publisher you don't want to confuse your players and it's hard to please everyone if your most successful games are all aimed at druids well that's your captive audience if you aim your next game at the rogue market you're gonna miss out on a lot of sales and perhaps generate some bad press from your legion of druid fans who bought your latest game and hated it you could potentially cover maybe two adjacent classes in your catalogue without causing too much customer confusion i mean druids and bards they both enjoy low interaction games perhaps you could straddle that intersection with your range and druids and fighters they both enjoy intellectually challenging gameplay so maybe there's some crossover there fighters and rogues both enjoy messing with their opponents so maybe they're complementary classifications but you might struggle to create a range which straddles two corners of the grid fighters and bards are unlikely to mesh well and druids and rogues have completely opposing tastes if you found all of this useful then feel free to use this classification to interrogate your own design but even better why not create your own classification your own avatars for your user base in an earlier video about onboarding i classified customers as collectors or players engaged or unengaged but you might focus on complexity a spectrum from casual to hardcore gamers or habits and stereotypes the strategist the quarterback the party animal the cheat designers do you have a picture in your head of who's going to be playing your game have you got that image in your head what do they want how do they look when they're fully engaged in the game are they smiling are they laughing negotiating or are they scratching their heads your job is to make that happen if you enjoyed this video please go back and watch some of the others there are loads and loads of videos about all aspects of board game design on this channel so please subscribe to make sure you don't miss out on any future content and i'll see you next time all the best